The problem of communications between physicians and the public reached a critical stage in early twentieth century America. Unprecedented scientific advances, rapid professionalism, and vast social upheavals, all magnified both the importance and the difficulty of communication between medical experts and lay society. This project will study how early twentieth century physicians sought to disseminate both their technical discoveries and their new professional claims to the public; the reaction of their diverse audiences; and the ways in which the need to communicate with lay people helped shape the scientific content and organizational programs of progressive-era public health. The specific goal is to produce a book-length history of the earliest uses of motion pictures in public health education. Between 1910 and the end of the silent era in 1927, literally hundreds of such films had been produced; they provided an entire generation with a major source of information and images of public health and the medical profession, in an era of vast change. Thus, careful historical study of these motion pictures can provide an important new perspective on some of the most complex issues in medical history: the diffusion of medical innovations; the changing relationship between medicine and morality; the technical and ethical problems of using the mass media to influence individual health behavior; and the problem of defining a role for professional experts within a pluralistic democracy. The results of this study should provide valuable perspectives for modern medical ethicists and health educators; as well as new and unique source materials for historians of many different medical specialties. An extensive filmography will help other medical historians to locate and use these films in their own research and teaching. Sources for this study will include many previously undiscovered films, as well as extensive published and manuscript documentation of the medical, social, financial, political, and artistic context in which they were produced and seen. The methodology combines thorough archival research with the newer methods and sources of communications research, film history, and social history. This approach will make it possible to document both the intentions of the filmmakers, and the reactions of their audiences. Appropriate comparisons with other approaches to health education will also be employed.